Ktm 200 E/xc

KTM 200 E/XC

A winner from the tighter Side of the tracks

There's a lot to be said for light weight and agility. Especially in a long, gnarly, off-road race. I don't care who you are (Scott Summers excluded), but at the two-hour mark of a three-hour hare scrambles,

you don't need knob-shredding power. You need the smooth juice that keeps a bike easy to ride. That's what makes 200cc two-strokes and 400cc four-strokes preferable to their horsepower-oozing, bigger brethren. Enter the K T M 200 E/XC, which I did, in the annual Tecate Hare Scrambles. Promoted by the Los Ancianos M/C, this new event was fashioned after the treacherous Tecate 250K Enduro, but employed a GNCC style format. And for any one proclaiming that the northern Baja Peninsula doesn't have any "Back East" enduro-style terrain, I challenge you to sample it someday.

The $5448 200 E/XC is truly 125-sized; in fact, it uses the same chassis as KTM's 125 E/XC. The only telltale sign that it's a 200 is the bulbous expansion chamber that fights to fit into the smaller frame. From the rider's perspective, however, it's immediately apparent that this is no 125. All that's needed is to let out the clutch without having to rev the motor (much). Truthfully, the 200 is more like a 250 for the first half of the power spread, with plenty of torque and boost to lift the front wheel at will. Then, it starts to go sour. Compared to a 250, there's less power at higher rpm. But then what do you expect from a 200? So, what happens when you line up against all the other Aclass bikes at the start of a long sandwash? You almost pull a holeshot, that's what! Hello six-speed, wide-ratio transmission. After everyone with motocross gearing had topped-out in fifth, I clicked the 200 into sixth and started passing back most of the 250s and 300s. A few turns into the "motocross" section, I had the A-class lead and was set to rip through the tight, Manzanita-lined trails unobstructed. This is where a 200 can't be beat, regardless of whether the rider is fresh or tired. On the first lap, I had all the energy to ride as hard as I could. Sure, I'd have gone a bit faster on a 250cc or larger bike, but like anyone else, I'd have gotten tired much more quickly. On the 200, I just rode it like a 125, screaming and shifting for all it was worth. And at the two-hour mark, when most riders start worrying about just finishing, what was I thinking? I was glad the 200 would grunt on down and lug where a 125 wouldn't. In effect, you can get lazy and still go fast. Sure, you can be sluggish on a bigger bike, but you have to fight to make it tuck and turn. Not so on the 200 E/XC. As is the case with the 380 E/XC, the 200's handling and suspension are race-ready right out of the box. Though I'd pre fer stiffer fork springs, I wouldn't change anything else. In fact, all we did to my bike was add a dry-break gas tank for quick fill-ups and a set of handguards to keep my fingers functioning at their primary role-typing. If ever there were an "Ultimate Tight Trailbike," the KTM 200 E/XC would win the title hands-down, besting its primary competition, the Kawasaki KDX200, in every category. An A class victory in the Tecate Hare Scrambles proves it.

Jimmy Lewis